


we know the words (but it's not enough)

by shuofthewind



Series: every song i've ever loved [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Children, Darcy Is A Fierce Protective Kitty, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Jack Murdock Deserved Better, Jack Murdock Is Not Stupid, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Smithsonian PA Voice: Best Friends Since Childhood, Word Nerd Matt Murdock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-06-08 04:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6838534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Apparently," Jack says, his head pounding, "they've imprinted. Like baby ducks."</p><p>"Children do that," says Father Lantom. "Or so I'm told."</p><p>[Or, Darcy gets dragged to New York by her mother before she even hits kindergarten, and things both change and stay the same. Really, Matt's just happy there's someone his age who gets excited about words like <em>sesquipedalian</em>.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Kids" by Mikky Ekko.
> 
> Guys, this AU has been sneaking into my dreams for weeks, and it's _killing me_. I have no plans aside from odd little vignettes and no real overarching plot other than LOOK AT THESE NERDS so there's that for you. The chapters will be short and oneshot/drabbly, and easy to churn out, with no particular due date, so there's that, too. 
> 
> Also, speaking as someone who taught herself to read at three, read _Harry Potter_ before kindergarten, and used to correct my grandfather on how to pronounce words like "pessimism" before hitting first grade, this is totally possible. 
> 
> Triggers/content warnings: Parental neglect. Darcy's mom is not a good mom, and has some mental health issues (depression) in addition to having emotionally (though not physically) abusive boyfriends, and thus things get sticky. Jack to the rescue. (I will defend Jack until my dying day.) Also, some mentions of sex work (nothing explicit; Darcy's mom works for a phone sex line, so it's more a warning for "hey, sometimes sex will be mentioned" than anything), some mentions of blood and bruising (Jack. Guys. Come on.) and some mentions of alcoholism and depression.

Darcy has hiding places.

In Georgia, it was easy. She knew Georgia. She knew her grandmother’s house with the overgrown bushes she could crawl into the middle of and not be found. If she really needed to go somewhere, she could walk the twenty minutes to the park (and that always gave her babushka a heart attack, vanishing and coming back hours later) to hide midway down the slide, caught against the plastic, sitting sideways in amber light. (Amber’s a new favorite word. It’s old sap, apparently. She asked her mom, but Lorna hadn’t been able to explain it. She’d watched _Jurassic Park_ instead.)

New York isn’t easy. New York is a mishmash of weird smells and loud voices and the kitchen sink that drips like a heartbeat and the landlord shouting at the door. She doesn’t know where to hide in New York, not really. She’s supposed to keep her mouth shut most of the time, anyway, because the landlord doesn’t know she’s there, or he’s not supposed to, but Darcy doesn’t like hiding under the bed in her mom’s room. It’s too close to the ground, even for her, and she’s small for a four-year-old. But she doesn’t know how to get back, either, so she can’t exactly go outside and wander around.

She uses the closet, for a while, until there are too many cardboard boxes crammed inside. There’s a cabinet in the kitchen that her mom never uses, and that works too, when she needs somewhere dark, but not all hiding places need to be dark. She misses the amber light of the slide, and how warm the plastic would get in sunlight. Eventually, after a few months in New York (Darcy turns five) she starts getting daring enough to wander around the building. There’s a covered bike rack by the front door that has an empty hollow in the back, where there’s a broken bucket (there’s a crack in the side like somebody kicked it) and a few old bike chains, but it’s the right size to hide in, and in summertime it’s warm and soupy and makes her think of Atlanta, and her mom never, ever looks here, so it works.

It doesn’t work, she thinks, sourly, when someone else is _in_ it.

“Go away,” Darcy says. The boy in her hiding place jumps so badly that he nearly knocks over the broken bucket. “This isn’t yours.”

He has a gap between his two front teeth, and it whistles, a little, when he talks. “Who’re you?”

“Not telling you that,” Darcy says. “You’re in my spot.”

“It smells like bike tires.”

“I don’t care.” Her throat hurts. Upstairs, her mom and Nick are still yelling at each other, and she just wants to hide, and now there’s a stupid kid who’s snuck into her spot and moved things and this isn’t _fair_. “It’s mine.”

The boy looks at her for a little bit, head cocked like a parrot. Then he crawls out of her hiding place, and dusts the back of his jeans off. He’s shorter than her, and there’s a weird, vicious happiness in that, that she can look down her nose at the invader and not have to worry about him being bigger. “Sorry.”

Darcy goes down on hands and knees, and wedges her way back into her hiding spot under the propped-up plastic, her back knocking against the rails of the bike rack. She thinks the kid might go away, after, but instead he just crouches at the entrance of her hidey-hole, watching her.

“You live in 4B,” he says.

Darcy makes a face. “Go away.”

“I hear your mom yelling a lot.”

“Go _away_ ,” Darcy says, and hides her face in her knees.

“My mom left,” says the boy. He settles with his legs pressed up against his chest, flat-footed, crouched like some kind of weird water bird. A heron, maybe. “Is that guy she yells at your dad?”

“He’s not my dad,” Darcy snaps. She doesn’t like Nick. Nick pinches her arm when he grabs her wrist and he yells a lot and it makes her mom cry, so no, he’s _definitely_ not her dad. “He’s my mom’s boyfriend. We moved up here because he found a job and now he doesn’t have it anymore so we’re stuck. He’s _not_ my dad.”

“They don’t like each other very much,” says the boy.

“Nobody likes my mom.”

The boy hums at her, and doesn’t move. He has stupid hair. It’s too long, and he keeps pushing it out of his eyes.

“Why’d your mom leave?”

His mouth turns down. “Why don’t you have a dad?”

“I do,” Darcy says. “He doesn’t know about me. If he did he’d come get me.” She’s very sure of this, even if her babushka had always looked very sad when she’d mentioned it. “Mom didn’t tell him about me so he doesn’t know.”

The boy nods. She forgives him for stealing her hiding place, just for that. People usually argue with her about her dad, not just nod along. “My mom knows about me,” he says. “She just didn’t want to stay. Dad says she was very sad.”

“My mom says my dad was a bastard,” Darcy says. “What do you want?”

“You live in 4B,” he says again. “I’m in 5B.”

The upstairs neighbor that slams the door in the middle of the night and has the TV on too loud for her mom after she drinks. “Oh.”

“My dad thought I was making you up.” The boy props his chin on his knees, too. “Said you were just visiting in 4B. You live here, though.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Where do you want to live?”

She misses places in Georgia, but not the house. “I don’t know. With my gran.” Because it’s _Gran_ to regular people, not _babushka_ , Mom’s very clear about that. “Not here. I don’t like it here.”

“Oh.” He has a wide mouth, and when it turns down he looks like a Muppet. Not Kermit, the one that doesn’t actually talk in anything other than _meep_ noises. “It’s nice here, though.”

Darcy shakes her head, wordlessly.

“What’s your name?” says the boy, and Darcy shifts. She wraps her arms around her legs and mirrors him, chin on her knees, peering through her bangs at this weirdo kid who won’t leave her alone. Her glasses are slipping down her nose.

“Darcy,” Darcy says. “Who’re you?”

“Matt,” Matt says. “Don’t you get hot in here?”

“Sometimes.” All the time, but this is her spot, and she doesn’t want anyone stealing it again. “I don’t mind.”

Matt watches her for a little while. Then he says, “You could come upstairs and hide in my closet if you want. If you don’t want to go home.”

“It’s not home.”

“To 4B, then.”

Darcy considers that. There’s something strange on his face that she thinks might be something she sees when she looks in the mirror. Sudden, fierce loneliness. “Is it dark?”

“It’s a closet.”

“I like the light in here.”

He chews the edge of his thumbnail. “How it’s yellow?”

“Amber,” Darcy says, prissy. “Like really old tree sap. Like in _Jurassic Park._ With the mosquito in the amber. It’s how they cloned dinosaurs. And then the velociraptor ate the guy alive and there was a lot of blood and my mom told me that people bleed like that when they get their arms bitten off.”

Matt has very big eyes, now. “Oh.”

“I like the light,” she says again.

“I think there’s a lamp that makes light like this,” he says. “Upstairs. My dad’s asleep, he won’t care if we move things.”

“Why’s he asleep?”

“He had a big fight last night and he always sleeps after those.” He draws himself up a little. “He boxes.”

“My mom works for a call center.” Darcy doesn’t exactly understand what a call center is, but it’s cool to say. “She talks a lot. She’s _loquacious._ ”

Matt blinks at her. “Loquacious?”

“Means she talks a lot.”

“I know that.” His eyebrows snap together. “Mrs. Gonzalez in 5F told me. Said I’m too loquacious.”

“My gran says it’s good to be loquacious. Until you turn into my mom. Gran says she nags.” Darcy shifts around, cramming up against the back of the bike rack. “You sure your dad won’t be mad?”

“Why would he be mad?”

“My mom yells when I do things without telling her.”

“Dad said it was okay,” Matt says. “He said if you were real you could show up and it’d be okay. And I think the bedroom lamp is yellow like this, so you can have the light. If you want.”

Darcy wavers.

“It won’t smell like rubber inside,” Matt says. “And it’s cooler. And there are books.” He ducks his head again, suddenly shy. “If you want.”

“What books?”

“Mrs. Gonzalez gave me a dictionary.” He sneaks another look at her. “I saw you reading _Matilda_.”

“I _was_ reading it.”

“I know.”

Darcy blinks at him. “Really?”

“I’ve read it,” he says. “It’s not like it’s _hard_.”

Not even her mom believes she can read _Matilda_ really. Her grandmother had, but her grandmother’s in Georgia and can’t get her the next one. “Oh.”

“’swhy I noticed you,” he says. 

She pushes her glasses up her nose, something sunny and sticky in her throat.

"Why're they taped?" Matt touches his fingertips to the edge of her glasses. "Are they broken?"

“We can’t buy new ones. Mom said I should throw them away, but I can’t see without them. My eyes are really bad.”

“I like them.”

Darcy wrinkles her nose at him. “You’re weird.”

“You’re hiding in a bike rack,” he says. “You’re weirder.”

She can’t really argue this.

“There are more books upstairs,” he says, and that works. She doesn’t like the smell of rubber much, anyway. Darcy unfolds from her knot, and Matt from 5B scurries back out of the way to let her free. In the sunlight, he has freckles.

“He really won’t be angry?” She fists her free hand up in her shorts. “Your dad.”

“No, just tired. And he looks kind of beat up, but that’s because he won. He always looks beat up when he wins.” Matt looks proud of this, weirdly. “Come on.”

.

.

.

“Dad.”

He has a concussion. He has a goddamn concussion, and there’s a bobcat clawing at the backs of his eyes, and he loves his kid, he does, but there’s a whine to Matty’s voice when he’s worried that’s stabbing his brain with a pickaxe. _What the hell time is it, even?_ “What.”

“ _Dad_.”

“ _What_.”

“Darcy can’t get back into 4B.”

Jack rolls onto his back. “Why you lookin’ at 4B?”

“Darcy doesn’t have a key and she can’t get back in and her mom’s probably gonna be gone all night and she should sleep on the couch.”

That’s all very fast and high-pitched and not something he can process with a concussion. “Who the hell is Darcy?”

“Darcy in 4B.”

This clears up nothing. “Kid, you need to speak English.”

“The girl you said was visiting and I said was real and she _does_ live here and she’s in my closet right now but she can’t get back into 4B and it’s really late and she doesn’t know where her mom is and doesn’t have a place to sleep and she says that her mom might not even know she’s gone and she doesn’t have a phone or anything and she doesn’t have anywhere to go and she can’t sleep in the bike rack, Dad, she can’t.”

He’s always been pretty impressed with how many words Matt can cram into a sentence when he wants, especially considering he’d refused to speak at all until about eighteen months ago. “How old’s Darcy?”

“Five,” Matt says.

 _Shit._ “Five?”

“It’s not that big a difference, only two months.”

“That,” Jack says, “is nowhere near close to the problem, Matty.”

Matty tugs at his arm again. “Come on.”

“She’s—” The gibberish starts processing. “Matty, why is she in your closet?”

“She likes the light.”

“There’s no light in your closet.”

Matty gets a closed-mouth Peter Pan look. “We moved the lamp.”

And succeeded, apparently, because nothing’s broken and nothing’s on fire, but _Christ_. “Told you not to touch that.”

“I know how to unplug a lamp.” Matt yanks. “She can sleep on the couch, right? Bernie sleeps on the couch sometimes.” 

Bernie’s usually sleeping on the couch when Bernie’s sleeping off a bender, but he’s not about to say that. “You’re killin’ me, kid. Where’s your closet monster?”

“She’s not a monster.”

“She’s living in the closet,” Jack says, and kicks the blankets off. “Right.”

She’s not living in the closet, not exactly. They’ve tugged a shitton of blankets in here, and the dictionary (he can’t get over how much Matt loves the dictionary, he really can’t, because if there’s any hint this kid is way smarter than he’s ever been, it’s in Matty waking him up at four in the morning to ask _how do you say this word_ and shove something like _sesquipedalian_ in his face), and yeah, the lamp from the living room is wedged in here too, the cord trailing out into the bedroom proper. He has to blink and focus for a little bit before he catches sight of the hair, and bright eyes peeking out from a blanket nest, like a stray cat hiding under a car.

“Your face is purple,” says the stray cat, muffled under the quilt.

“’s what happens when you get punched a lot,” Jack says. He crouches down. Behind him, Matty’s bouncing on the balls of his feet, hand fisted up in the back of his shirt. And Christ, Christ, but this little girl’s a twig of a child. Healthy, just…skinny. Elbows and knees everywhere. Her glasses are held together with tape at the hinge of the left earpiece. "You livin’ in my closet now?”

“He said it would be okay.” Her eyes dart to Matty, over Jack’s shoulder. “You said it was okay. Is it not okay?”

Definitely a stray cat. Twitchy and nervous and big eyes and bones everywhere. “Not like you can live in Matty’s closet.”

“I don’t want to live here.” She narrows her eyes. “I like hiding.”

And that’s a bad combo if he ever heard one, if it puts her in his kid’s closet at—Christ. Two in the morning. “Where’s your parents?”

“Mom,” says the little stray cat girl. Darcy, Matty’d called her. Darcy in 4B. “She’s out. She works all night.”

“Your dad?”

“Don’t have one.”

Matty yanks very hard on the back of his shirt. “She’s locked out.”

“And how,” Jack says, “would you know that?”

“Checked.”

At two in the morning. The water closes over his head, and he’s sinking down way past the deep end, all the way to the ocean floor. “I told you, you can’t leave the apartment while it’s dark out, Matty.”

“ _I_ didn’t,” Matty says, mulish. “ _She_ did. And she came back, because she didn’t want to sleep on the floor. She can sleep here.”

“She can’t sleep in your closet, Matty.”

“I didn’t say the _closet_ , I said the _couch_.”

Two in the morning and his kid’s a damn lawyer, Jesus. “How long have you been here?”

Darcy from 4B pulls the blankets away from her face. She has a sharp little face to go with her sharp elbows and her sharp eyes, and she purses her mouth like an unhappy nun. “I dunno. A while. We fell asleep.”

“Your mom’s probably worried sick.”

Darcy’s nose wrinkles. “She probably hasn’t noticed. I stayed out for two days once and she didn’t notice. She never really notices.”

 _Wake up, Jack, come on._ A five year old in his kid’s closet with a mother who apparently doesn’t notice things like a missing child. He rubs a hand over his face, and winces. “Shit.”

“She doesn’t have a phone, either,” Darcy says. “She works at a call center but she doesn’t have a phone. Nick has a phone but Nick and Mom were yelling, so he probably went home. Or fell asleep.”

“Nick?”

“Mom’s boyfriend,” she says, in a tone of absolute disgust.

“They yell a lot,” Matty says, like he’s an expert in this matter now. “They’re the ones that yell all the time.”

From what he’s caught of _those_ arguments…shit. _With a five-year-old in the house_? “You can hide in the closet all you want, but sleepin’ in there will give you a headache.” Jack stands. “C’mon, blanket-thief.”

“’m not a thief.”

“Blanket borrower, then.”

Darcy brightens. “Like the book. _The Borrowers._ ”

Ah, shit. “Haven’t read that one.”

“I have,” Matt says. He gives Jack a look, as if to say, _look at this amazing thing I found, Dad, can we keep it,_ and fucking hell, he’s screwed. He’d been prepped for his kid finding a stray cat, not a stray _girl_.

“It’s good.” Darcy from 4B yawns so wide her jaw cracks, and makes a fierce face again, like she’s daring him to laugh. “It’s really good. It’s about tiny people who live in the walls. And the floor. It’d be nice to live in walls, I think. Nobody’d ever find your hiding places.”

“The bike rack,” Matty tells her, “isn’t a good hiding place.”

“Is so.”

“It’s way too early in the morning for this conversation, brat pack.” He eyes the stray cat. “Come on, kid. Out of the closet. I’m gonna go make sure your apartment’s empty, leave a note.” Talk to the landlady. Call the call center. Possibly inform the police. _Hello, officer, there’s a stray child in my closet. My son’s adopted her. Please advise._ “You know which phone bank your mom works for?”

Darcy scrunches her nose up. “Roseworks.”

“Roseworks?”

She shrugs, as if to say, _that’s all I got, man_.

“Right.” He’s not falling back to sleep. “Out of the closet, borrower. And you—” Matty ducks his head rather than meet his eyes “—should be in bed. I trust you to go to bed at a normal time, kid, what’s this two AM garbage?”

“We fell asleep,” Darcy snaps, and he blinks. She looks ready to bite his finger off. “It was an accident.”

Jack unplugs the lamp. “I’m shutting the closet.”

Darcy darts out in the three seconds before it closes, trailing a blanket and still glaring at him as if she wants to snap and nip and spark. “It was an _accident_.”

“I get it, kid. It’s okay.”

“You can’t be mad if it’s an accident.”

Jack stops, and looks at her. She’s all ferocious, pointed stubbornness, but there’s a look to her face that he doesn’t like much at all. “No,” he says, slowly. “Not if it’s an accident.”

Darcy glances at Matty, and hunches closer into her blankets again.

“Couch.” Jack heaves Matt up off the floor. “And you go to bed, kid, come on.”

Shit. The last time he’d seen that look on Matt’s face, he’d been three and his balloon had popped against a fence. “You’re not going to put her back in 4B, are you?”

“Didn’t I just say couch?” The couch folds out into a bed, which is why Bernie shows up so damn often. “We can fold it out and she can sleep there. Just help me move the blankets out there once I get it set up, will ya, I can’t carry them all. And then you go to bed.”

Matty considers this, and then nods, once, a little prince dispensing his approval. Darcy’s still trailing blankets, eyes bleary.

“Mom won’t be home,” she tells him again, and tips back and forth on her feet. “She works all night.”

“I’ll check anyway.” When she knocks into his leg, he says, “You okay there?”

“’m fine.”

She doesn’t move, fisting her hands up in the blankets and swaying, eyes like an owl’s behind her taped-up glasses.

“I could carry you,” Jack says. “If you wanted.”

Darcy knocks into his knee again. “I can walk.”

“Okie-doke.” He considers. “If you’re sure.”

Darcy tips her head back, considering, peering down her nose like a real goddamn alley cat. Then, very solemn, she says, “You could carry me if you wanted to.”

Jack has to bite his tongue not to laugh. He thinks, for a minute, she might fight him, but she’s a puddle of sleepy kid, all fierceness gone. She doesn’t even twitch. “Couch party, come on.”

“You smell like blood.”

“That also happens when you get hit in the face a lot.”

She peers at him. “Would it hurt if I touched your nose?”

“It’d hurt like a son of a bitch, kid, don’t do it.”

She hums. “’kay.”

“What’s your full name, kid?”

“Darcy Ann,” she says. “Lewis.”

“Your mom’s name?”

“Lorna.” Another crackling yawn. “Lorna.”

“Okie-doke,” Jack says again.

By the time he comes back from checking on 4B (no answer, not that he’d really expected one) called Rosebanks (which turns out to be a phone sex line, and isn’t it fun to explain that _hi, I’m the neighbor of one of your employees, just letting you know her daughter’s asleep on my couch and she should check in 5B when she gets in_ ), and tried to figure out if someone at the sex line’s called the police (which wouldn’t surprise him) it’s three in the morning, and Darcy’s asleep. When he peeks into Matty’s room, though, Matt sits up like a jackknife, and stares at him.

“Kid, go to _sleep._ ”

“I told you she was real.”

“And next time when you tell me about girls with taped-up glasses living on the floor below us, I’ll believe you, just—sit your ass down and fall asleep.”

He’s _buzzing_ , he’s so excited. “Okay.”

Jack watches him from the door for a little bit, just long enough to know _yeah, no, you ain’t sleepin’, the fuck is this_. He’s four. Well, five in October, but  _shit_ , he’s pretty sure Matty shouldn’t be girl-obsessed this early. Then Matty says, very quietly, “She likes books.”

 _Fucking hell, kid, break my heart._  He's the only kid in the building younger than seven, _and_ the only kid who likes to sit and read, and the combination isn't really all that good for finding friends. Doesn't help that Jack can't read without his eyes crossing., letters spiraling into messes on the page. “’sgood.” Jack clears his throat. “Maybe you can talk to Mrs. Gonzalez tomorrow about her shelves, yeah? See if you can get permission for her to borrow some.”

“Okay,” Matty says, pleased. “You’re not angry she was in the closet, are you?”

“Kid, you have to do a lot more to piss me off.”

His smile’s crooked and lopsided and all Maggie, and that breaks his heart, too. “Cool.”

“Go to sleep, jackass,” Jack says, and this time Matty actually does. In the living room, Darcy makes an odd mewling noise, and curls tighter under the blankets.

“Well,” Jack says to the empty hallway. “Okay, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon Jack as an undiagnosed dyslexic, so.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: same as last chapter, so far as I can tell.

Darcy’s mom and Nick are arguing again. He can hear them through the floor, even with the blankets over his head and a pillow muffling one ear. He can’t tell what they’re saying, but they’re really loud, and they sound incredibly angry, and Matt isn’t entirely certain he _wants_ to know what they’re shouting about. “Nick hates Mom’s job,” Darcy tells him, whispering under the blanket. (The first time she stays on the couch, she goes back to 4B the next morning. The second time she stays for three days straight. This is the third time, and the second night in a row so far, and Dad’s stopped being weird about coming out in the morning to find Matt on the couch, too. He just sighs and makes coffee.) “He hates Mom’s job and when we speak Russian. He gets really mad at me when I use it, because he doesn’t know what I’m saying.” Her nose wrinkles. “I think that’s why, anyway.”

She says it in a way that makes him wonder if she’s frightened, even if she’s trying not to show it. The flashlight they have stowed under the blanket leaves odd shadows over her face. Matt touches his fingers to the back of her hand, and Darcy jumps a little, ribs heaving. Darcy gets weird and twitchy when people make loud noises around her, or if they move fast unexpectedly, and he’s been trying to be really careful about it. Dad had explained it. “You know there are cats you see in alleys sometimes?” His bruises had been getting better, but his face had still been mostly green. “When you live with a lot of loud noises and a lot of angry people, y’know, sometimes you get jumpy. ‘slike when I come right out of the ring and I can’t stop movin’. Let her be if it seems like she doesn’t want anyone touchin’ her, Matty.”

Darcy squeezes his fingers this time, though, so she must be good for now. She doesn’t jump nearly so often anymore, anyway. Yesterday—and he’s very proud of this—she’d crammed in next to him on Mrs. Gonzalez’s armchair so she could get a better look at the _Grey’s Anatomy_ book. He'd tried really hard not to scare her, but she hadn't hesitated once, and it makes him smile sometimes when he thinks about it.

“He gets mad whenever Jack comes to talk to Mom,” Darcy says suddenly. She might be telling him a secret. “He doesn’t like Jack.”

Matt makes a face. “Well, Dad doesn’t like him either.”

“I think he knows that.”

“I don’t like him,” says Matt. “He scares you.”

Darcy’s hand squeezes tighter into his. For what feels like forever, she doesn’t say a word. “I wish he would go away.”

He adds that to the list of things he knows about Darcy. It’s kind of short right now, but it’s getting longer every day. She doesn’t like telling people things, and she definitely doesn’t talk to his dad or to her mom or to Nick, but she tells _him_ things. Not easy things, but little secret things. About how her grandmother’s favorite lullaby was in Russian, a song about monsters coming in through a window to eat children’s eyes. What she has nightmares about. Where her favorite hiding places are. She has a new one, on the roof, in the community garden Mrs. Gonzalez runs. It’s too hot still to stay there all the time, but it smells nice under the tomato plants. The shadows of the leaves remind him of the Elves in _The Hobbit._

Darcy, he thinks, is special. Nobody else he knows thinks about things the way she does. She knows what he’s talking about when he uses words like _antique_ and _amalgam_ and _dissent,_ she reads books he knows and asks questions about everything and comes up with new constellations when they look at Mrs. Gonzalez’s book of galaxies. It’s kind of amazing, really. He wishes, secretly, that she could just stay, that she didn’t have to go back down to 4B, that she could stay here with him and Dad and not have to worry about Nick or get scared of her mom or any of it. He doesn’t tell her that, because she still gets really weird about Dad asking questions about her parents, but he wishes it anyway, before he sleeps. Maybe his grandmother’s right and God hears things like that.

“If he doesn’t like your mom,” Matt says, “why does he stay?”

Darcy shrugs. Her glasses are pressing into her cheek, going lopsided. The tape on the hinge is black, now, matte. Dad had replaced it when the adhesive had worn off the old stuff. “Sometimes he likes her. He always likes her better when I’m not there, usually.” Her voice cracks a bit. “He really doesn’t like me.”

“We like you,” Matt says. “Even if he doesn’t.”

Darcy peeps a smile at him, and tightens her grip on his fingers. She doesn’t say anything.

“We’re friends,” he says. His heart’s beating fast, all of a sudden, leaving a taste in his mouth like scorched oil. He’s never really asked, before. He’s fairly sure of the answer anyway, but he wants to ask just in case. “Right?”

She scrunches her nose up. “’course. What’d you think we were?”

He flicks the flashlight on and off with his free hand. Even in the dark, she doesn’t look away. “I dunno.”

The other kids in the building have never really liked him, since he talks about things they’ve never heard of and they’re all older than he is anyway. He’d been fine just having his dad, for the most part, but not even his dad can talk about all the things he wants to talk about. Darcy can, somehow. It’s weird, having someone who can keep up. Sometimes when he thinks about it—or around it, because thinking about it makes him feel like he’s being filled up with things he doesn’t have words for yet—he wonders if other people wait for friends like this, or if they make themselves fit with people who don’t understand them just because they’re lonely. There’s a difference between lonely and being alone, or that’s what his dad says, anyway. _We’re loners, kid,_ he’d said, when Matt had asked why it was so hard to make friends _. Takes a lot for us to like someone and for people to like us. Doesn’t mean we’re broken, just means we’re picky. Some people can’t keep up with that, ‘sall._

“People don’t like me,” he says, after a moment. “I’m a know-it-all smartass.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Darcy says, “and they’re morons.”

Matt blinks. “I _am_ a know-it-all smartass, though. Even Dad says so.”

“Yeah,” she says, half-asleep, “but I like you anyway. They’re just stupid.”

She’s asleep before he can figure out what to say. Matt just kind of looks at her for a while, way longer than he should, until he can’t keep his eyes open any longer. The next morning, when he wakes up, it’s to find his dad brewing coffee and sighing and saying, “You have your own bed, y’know, I paid for it.”

Matt shrugs, and shuffles off the edge of the couch bed to go find the dictionary.

.

.

.

Saturday night brings a call from his mother and a lecture about proper church-going Catholics (“—might be old enough to have a kid but Jonathan, I swear, I will tan your backside if you skip one more week—”), which means on Sunday, the fourth night Darcy’s spent on their couch, he has to shake both kids awake at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty to let them know that they have to return Darcy to 4B.

“Why?” Matty says, and it’s such a plaintive little whining thing that he can’t help but think of puppies that have been kicked. “It’s Sunday.”

“Church, kid, come on.” Darcy’s blinking, blearily, from the end of Matt’s bed. They switch back and forth—Matt sneaking onto the couch, or Darcy sneaking into Matt’s room—and he still has a tiny heart attack every time he checks and one of them isn’t where they’re supposed to be. Today, at least, they’d both been nice enough to wind up in Matt’s room, even if Darcy’s curled up at the end of the bed like a pet cat instead of being a sensible human being and using blankets, so there’s slightly less heart failure going around. Considering Darcy’s perfectly comfortable with letting herself out of 4B in the middle of the night to wander around, he thinks this is justifiable terror. 

 _I should install a second lock out of her reach._ Possibly with a three-digit combination. Or a hand scanner. That’s a thing at expensive companies, isn’t it? _Pain in the ass._

Matt’s nose wrinkles. “Why?”

“Because your gran is on my ass about the new preacherman, that’s why. I suffer, you suffer, ‘show this works, Matty.” He hasn’t set foot in a church without being dragged there since Maggie left. Jack’s not entirely sure when churches started feeling like cages, but they do, now, and it’s unsettling. “You wanna fight with God and your grandmother about Sunday sermons, you can do that. Good damn luck.”

Matty makes a face. “No.”

“Better choice.”  

“Gran cheats.”

“She does, yeah.” He scuffs Matty’s hair. “Go get ready.”

Darcy’s still not really awake. She rubs at her eyes. “Mmrgh.”

“Yeah, mmrgh.” It’s been almost a month since she started turning up underfoot, but he’s still trying to be real damn careful with Darcy Lewis and touch, especially since he’d seen the way her mother will drag her places. Hand tight around her shoulder, or her wrist, wrenching her arm up at awkward angles, not noticing when Darcy yelps. When she has enough energy to give a fuck, anyway. The few times Jack’s had a chance to talk to her, she’s been harsh and biting and flapped a hand. _Whatever._ And Christ, she’s so young, younger than him, the age she should be in college or doing something other than this, getting into screaming fights at four in the morning and raising a five-year-old all alone. When he touches the top of her head, Darcy doesn’t flinch. “You need to get up and wash your face and scoot, closet monster.”

Her mouth twists. “Don’t want to.”

 _Knife to the heart._ He should have more practice, he thinks, with small children saying things that gut him. Somehow it always stings the same. Jack palms the back of Matt’s head, pushing him off towards the bathroom—he goes, tripping a little, stopping and looking back at the pair of them, Jack and Darcy, his eyes flicking back and forth like he’s trying to figure something out. Still, when Jack flaps a hand at him, he goes. Jack waits, just a little, until he hears the bathroom door shut. He drops down onto the end of Matty’s bed.

“Have to go back to your mom sometime, kid. Can’t stay here forever.”

And shit, that was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes are wet, now. Darcy sniffs, loud and uncomfortable, and scrubs at her face with the back of her hand. _Fucking hell, Murdock, way to make a little girl cry._

“We can come get you after church,” he says, because _shit shit shit please don’t cry I don’t know what to do when small children cry and never have shit fuck hell—_ “If your ma’s okay with it. Don’t think Matty’ll mind.”

“I don’t,” Darcy says, and then stops. Her nose is bright red from how much effort she’s putting into holding back tears. “Nick’s there.”

He’s spoken to Lorna twice, Jack thinks. Lorna’s boyfriend Nick is a ghost out of the corner of his eye, a silence behind the half-open door. He’s seen Nick around, tall and whippy and sour-mouthed, good-looking and dangerous, but he’s never said a word, and neither has Nick What’s-His-Bucket. He knows more about Nick from overhearing all the bullshit he throws downstairs. The tone’s clear enough, even if the words aren’t. It’s why he’s been careful to not ever make a fuss about Darcy’s afternoon visits turning into four or five day stays. He’s not sure if Lorna’s grateful for it, but he sleeps a little easier knowing that there’s not a kid stuck in the middle of that. “Yeah, well, can’t help with that one, kid. Nick’s your mom’s boyfriend, he’ll be there sometimes.”

She’s stubborn and silent and crying, damp on her cheeks and her hair falling forward to hide her eyes. Darcy curls her hands into small fists on the blankets, and turns away from him.

“Hey,” he says. “’sgood of you not to tell your mom’s secrets, Darcy. Y’know, it’s—it’s loyal. It can be really good, to be loyal, if you like someone enough. And she’s your mom, you love her, you wanna protect her. But if something’s going on down there that—that scares you, you can tell me. You won’t be in trouble, not with me or your mom.” And that’s not a promise he can make, not really, but there’s something biting in his lungs at the thought of not saying it. If Lorna gets pissed at him later, so be it. It’s not like he can get the woman to string more than two words together at a time. “Won’t be mad.”

Darcy sniffs again. In the bathroom, the sink turns off.

“Won’t be mad if you don’t tell me either,” he adds, and for the first time she looks at him, blinking behind her too-big glasses. “But if you don’t feel safe, or if somethin’ scares you, y’know. Can’t help if I don’t know what it is.”

Darcy just looks at him, for a while. She needs to blow her nose. Jack finally claps his hands to his knees, stands up. “C’mon. Should clean your face up before you go home, Matty’ll kill me if he thinks I made you cry.”

He thinks she might want to say something, judging by how her lips are trembling. Still, she stays quiet. Darcy rolls off the bed, and wipes at her face again with the hem of her shirt. Jack’s turning towards the door when he sees her move, when she reaches out with one hand and then drops it again, really fast, like she’s stopping herself. The weird, bursting, burning feeling in his throat is like when he’d been ten, and a squirrel at the park had dropped down onto his bench and propped its tiny paws on his knee and watched him, unafraid. Jack drops his hand down a little, within her reach, and very carefully doesn’t look at her. It takes a second or two before she reaches out, and catches at his fingers. Her hand’s damp and sticky and warm, and her fingers are shaking a little, but in the next second she has such a fierce grip that his bruises are smarting. Jack closes his hand around hers, carefully loose, and says, “Matty’s gonna ask.”

“Don’t tell,” Darcy says, very soft.

“Matty?”

She shakes her head again, and bites her lip hard enough to split the skin. “Mom’ll be mad I said—”

She stops. Jack crouches down, and his cracked rib screams at him when he does it, an awful yelp in his chest. Darcy watches him through her bangs, stray cats and tame squirrels, and when Jack tugs a little at a strand of her hair, she doesn’t flinch.

“Won’t tell,” he says. “I’m good at keepin’ secrets.”

That gets him a tiny smile, at least. If it were Matt, he’d kiss her forehead or something, but it’s not Matt, and he’s not sure she won’t panic if he tries to do anything more than this, crouch here and be on her level and tell her the truth.

“C’mon.” When he wipes at her face with the hem of his sleeve, she scrunches her whole face up. “Look like hell, kid, you been the one boxing lately?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

The trembly little smile catches, and holds. “Yeah, ‘m sure.”

“You absolutely sure? ‘cause you look like you’re goin’ into a fight.”

“You fight, not me.”

“Ah, I get my ass beat, I don’t fight.”

“You _do_.”

“Sometimes.” Jack swipes at the tip of her nose with his thumb. “Go. Face. Wash it. We’ll walk you down after.”

Panic flashes behind the glasses. “I can go.”

“I know you can, kid. Matty’s gonna wanna walk with you, tho.”

A five-year-old, he thinks, should not be able to look like his mom, and definitely shouldn’t have the _I know what you’re doin’, and I don’t like it_ look down pat. “I can go on my own.”

“Take it up with Matty, not me.” He pushes. “Go wash your face.”

Getting ready for church is a debacle. Jack doesn’t want to go, and neither does Matt, and Matt can generally tell when Jack doesn’t want to do something and uses that as an excuse to drag his feet. It doesn’t help that Darcy’s gone quiet, jumpy and nervous, and Matty keeps giving him looks like _what did you do_ and _I trusted you_ and _you broke her_ and it’s making his throat pinch uncomfortably. Means Matty doesn’t shut his damn mouth for more than three seconds the entire time they’re in the apartment, or wandering the hall, or taking the elevator down to the fourth floor. He shuts up, though, the way someone will turn off a television, when they get close enough to 4B to see the number on the door.

Darcy drags her feet.

“Think your mom’ll be up?” Jack says.

“No.” She’s almost silent. “Prob’ly.”

If she doesn’t answer the door, then he’s just gonna give up and drag Darcy to St. Patrick’s. No matter how uncomfortable it is, taking someone else’s kid to church. Or how much shit it could land him in. “We can try,” he says, and hits the bell. It echoes through the wood, tri-toned. Jack tries very hard not to notice the way that Darcy snags Matty’s hand and holds on, squeezing hard enough to make him yelp. “Worth a shot.”

For a long, anguished moment, there’s nothing. Then a footstep, and the slide of a chain. It’s not Lorna, to open the door, but Nick, lanky, whippy Nick, a thundercloud over his head. He has, Jack realizes, a tattoo on his shoulder from the Kitchen Irish.

_Ah, shit._

“Who’re you?” Nick says, after a beat. “The fuck you want this early?”

“I was—” he stops. “Looking for Lorna Lewis.”

“She’s asleep,” Nick says. His eyes drop down, to Matty and to Darcy, and his whole face changes, from thundercloud to hurricane. “You come to give her back?”

 _Yeah, no. Game’s changed._ “She’ll be back in a few hours,” Jack says, and down near his knee Darcy turns her face up to him with a look like an electric shock. “Just lettin’ her know. Forgot to mention it. Thing they wanted to do, this morning.”

Anyone, he thinks, other than Nick What’s-His-Bucket anyway, would have called bullshit on his excuse. Nick just looks at him again, scowling, and shuts the door without another word. If he tells Lorna, or not, that’s…well, it’s a problem. But it’s not entirely Jack’s problem anymore.

“Shit.” He tries to keep it under his breath, doesn’t know how well it works out. “Ah, shit.”

Matty says, “Is she going home?”

“Not for another few hours.” Jack rubs his hands over his face. _Come on, Murdock, new plan._ “C’mon. We’re skippin’. We can go somewhere else this morning.”

His mother’s going to give him hell, but Christ, the looks on their faces when he says it will be written on his goddamn grave.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: again, some discussion of depression, mentions of alcohol abuse/alcoholism, Matt's grandmother being awful (WHO TELLS A CHILD "YOU HAVE THE DEVIL IN YOU" I SWEAR TO SHIT), and cute children.
> 
> Sorry this took a while, I was working on TSoD and it ate my life.

There’s a circle in red in the middle of September on the Murdocks’ kitchen calendar, and Darcy kind of hates it, because it means that kindergarten’s going to start without her.

She hasn’t told Matt she can’t go. She doesn’t really know how. A lot of the time when she’s in 5B, or wandering around with Matty, or talking to Mrs. Gonzalez about Spanish things (Mrs. Gonzalez is teaching her Spanish words, though never enough at a time, which drives her crazy), she doesn’t even remember it, that on the fifteenth Matt’s going to go to the local kindergarten and Darcy’s going to be stuck in 4B again. She doesn’t want to be stuck in 4B again. Nick and her mom still hate each other, even though Nick comes by every couple of days. Jack’s started swearing when he hears her mom and Nick fight through the floor, though he always stops when he realizes Darcy’s seen him doing it. “Sorry, kid,” he says, the one time she just keeps on looking at him, asking questions with her eyes because she doesn’t know how to say things. “It’s nothin’. Just sounds awful down there, is all.”

Darcy shrugs. It’s not as bad as it could be. The fights between her mom and her gran had been a lot worse. Very loud, very long. All in Russian. Babushka had cried a lot, and Mom would usually sleep the whole next day and the day after and the day after, and Darcy would go and hide in the bushes until Babushka came looking.

(Grandmothers, she thinks, should not be like Matilda Murdock. Darcy’s met Matty’s grandmother, now, and Mrs. Murdock scares her a lot. “Eerie, ghostly little thing,” Mrs. Murdock had said when she’d thought Darcy and Matty hadn’t been listening, sitting in a closet pretending that they had gone to Narnia. “Is there something wrong with her, that she doesn’t speak?”

“Doesn’t open her mouth up around people she doesn’t like,” Jack had said, “sensible little spark,” and then Mrs. Murdock had changed the subject to church. Jack still hasn’t gone to church and Matty’s gran seems kind of mad about it, which means every time she leaves Jack kind of leans against the door and lets out a breath and says something like, “There goes the dragon again, we’re free another week.”

Matty’s still really, really angry with his gran about her asking if something’s wrong with Darcy. He won’t talk to her. It makes his gran get all pink and frustrated. He won’t tell Jack why he won’t say a word to Mrs. Murdock, but Darcy knows that’s the reason, because the night it’d happened he’d crawled onto the couch bed, and said, “Nothing is wrong with you,” very, very fiercely, like he was going to change the universe with it. “Nothing is wrong with you.”

Darcy does not understand why he’s so insistent about this until six months later, when she sees Mrs. Murdock lean in and tell Matty that “devil’s still in you, boy,” in a mean way, the way her mom talks when she’s drinking too much. Darcy marches right up to Matilda Murdock and kicks her in the shin, and the resultant screech gives her enough cover to seize Matt and drag him into one of her hiding places, in the back of the hall closet behind a stack of sleeping bags. Matt looks at her with huge eyes, and doesn’t say anything, but his hand finds hers in the dark and he doesn’t let go until she has to go back to 4B.)

Anyway. Darcy can’t go to school, and she only asks her mom about it once, on a day when Nick isn’t there and she’s awake and isn’t drinking all that much. “You can’t until next year,” her mom says shortly, and stubs out a cigarette in the tray. “That’s all.”

“Why?”

“Nuns scare me.”

“Why?”

“They don’t scare you?”

Darcy, who has seen some nuns wandering around the neighborhood, shrugs. They always look clean, and that’s all she’s ever noticed. “They’re nice.”

“Shit, kid,” says her mom, which feels weird, now. Her mom never used to call her _kid_. It’s what Jack calls her, and it feels strange on her skin in 4B. “Your gran would be ashamed of you. What kind of Lewis are you?”

(Darcy does not cry. Darcy stays away from nuns for as long as she can get away with it, but Darcy does not cry.)

She’s not lying to them, she tells herself, if nobody asks. Nobody’s asked if she’s going to school, so the fact that she hasn’t said anything isn’t a lie. Not really. And she doesn’t remember most of the time. It’s maybe three days before the circle on the calendar when Matty says, “Dad says there’ll be more books at school, to look at.”

Darcy, who is tracing patterns out in the fuzzy carpet, freezes. “Oh.”

“Probably for little kids,” Matt says, wrinkling his nose. “But there might be good ones.”

“Oh.” Her voice sounds weird.

“We could always bring books, I guess.”

Darcy doesn’t say anything. She draws triangles in the carpet.

“Darcy?”

“I can’t,” she says. Her sight’s all blurry and she doesn’t want to cry, but she’s not sure how to stop it.

“Can’t what?” Matty makes a face. “Bring books to school?”

“Go.” Her throat hurts, too. “To school. I can’t go.”

Matt blinks at her a few times. “Why?”

“Mom said no,” she says, because she _does_ want to go, she wants it so bad she thinks sometimes she’ll burn up with it, but at the same time she doesn’t want to go just as badly, because if she goes then—what? What if she’s bad at it? What if—she’s so full of what ifs. She doesn’t know how to say all of them. “She said—she said that I can’t, that’s all.”

Matt’s very quiet. She doesn’t look up from the carpet, lets her hair fall forward to hide behind. She’s never heard Matt so quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Darcy says, miserably, and starts to pull her knees up against her chest. There’s a flicker of movement, and then Matt’s sitting in front of her, looking at her the way he had when she’d been hiding behind the bike racks, kind of confused and curious and shy all at once. And determined. He looks the way he did when he’d decided to climb to the top of the tree in the park, which had frightened Mrs. Gonzalez a lot even though he’d been fine. Darcy blinks at him, and realizes her face is wet.

“Then I can stay here until you can,” he says.

Her heart leaps and falls all at once. “You have to go to school.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Well.” He makes a different face, a _you caught me_ face. “Yeah. But it’s not fair, that you don’t. And I wanted to go with you.”

She feels weirdly shivery, like her mouth is trying to smile and frown at once, and it kind of stings. Matt settles properly on the carpet, crossing his legs, and then shakes his sleeve over his hand like Jack does and wipes at her face. Darcy wrinkles her nose. “Your sleeve smells like popcorn.”

Matt wrinkles his nose up at her again. “Sorry.”

.

.

.

Basically it’s a shitshow.

Jack’s been doing his best to stay out of Lorna’s way, for the most part. It’s not his place to tell her how to raise her kid (he wants to yell, he wants to scream, he wants to seize Nick What’s-His-Bucket by the scruff of the neck and chuck him out a window, he wants to _rage_ ) so he hasn’t asked, and Lorna, who tends to avoid talking to him anyway (because of Nick What’s-His-Bucket) hasn’t supplied the information.

But Christ, if there’s any real evidence that his kid’s related to him, it’s in Matty’s goddamn stubbornness. “I won’t go,” he says again, every time Jack tries a new logic trick on his goddamn _four-year-old child_ about why he has to go to St. Agnes Preschool/Kindergarten. Nothing actually sways him, even if Darcy isn’t in the room. He’s a goddamn fucking stubborn little shit, and he’s not budging, and there’s two days left until Wednesday the fifteenth, and Jack? Is _screwed._

One afternoon he deposits both brats with Mrs. Gonzalez (who is delighted) and knocks on 4B until Lorna opens the door. Nick What’s-His-Bucket isn’t there, but she still refuses to let him in for a good five minutes, until finally Jack says, “Either we talk about your goddamn kid in the hallway or we talk about her in your kitchen, I don’t give a shit,” and Lorna sighs through her nose and lets him in. There’s a fidgeting energy to her that makes his stomach clench, because it’s like Maggie, that twitchiness, the inability to sit still. Not quite to the same extreme, but some kind of hypervigilance, like she’s waiting for the worst possible thing to happen.

He drags the story out of her in bits and pieces. She wants Darcy to go, and Nick wants Darcy to go (she dances around this, but he gets the feeling that he’s right, especially considering Nick What’s-His-Bucket likes Darcy out of the house as much as possible) but she can’t afford it. That, and the paperwork is a mess. (He looks at the paperwork, or the parts she lets him see. The paperwork isn’t a mess. The paperwork is a _wreck_.) She missed application deadlines (“Forgot,” she says, still smoking like a chimney) and she didn’t return any calls (“Forgot again,” she says) and the fee waiver had also been rejected, and she’d just…quit. Which, Jack thinks, is not unheard of, when you spend days and days in a black fog unable to get out of bed. Sometimes he’s surprised Lorna can stand up at all. Forgetting is a thing that happens, when you live in fog with monsters gnawing away in your brain.

But shit, Darcy can’t not go to school. Even if it’s kindergarten, she can’t not. She _could_ —Mrs. Gonzalez would be happy to keep an eye on her, he’s sure—but the look of heartbreak on her face about it is actually nauseatingly painful. (And it’s been a month, damn it, he shouldn’t be getting this emotional about this kid, but she’s the first friend Matty’s ever had, and she’s firework bright, and she shouldn’t have to be stuck just because her mother is.) So he goes hunting. He asks around. He pulls out all the goddamn stops and somehow manages to convince Matty to go to the first two days without being overly dramatic.

(“—you’ll only be there until one, not a big deal, I’m trying to fix it, and if we’re really lucky—”

“When are Murdocks lucky?”

“When we try really hard,” Jack says, and Matt scrunches his face up. “Lemme try a few things, kid. And if she can’t go, we’ll figure somethin’ out.”)

Then, finally, he bites the bullet.

There are a handful of people on the board of St. Agnes’s schools. One of them is the priest at St. Patrick's, the one that his mother had been trying to get him to go and see weeks ago. The other board members, Jack thinks, are either businessmen or PTA moms, and neither of those will work considering Lorna’s…everything. He needs someone to listen. Priests are paid to listen. It’s close enough.

It’s Tuesday afternoon, when he finally marches into the church. Tuesday afternoon means that there aren’t any sermons going on, not really. Still, the priest—younger than Jack expected, maybe in his thirties—is going over paperwork in the lounge, looking up at him over reading glasses and blinking like an owl.

“Can I help you?”

“Ah…maybe.” Jack hooks his hands into his pockets. “I was wondering if I could talk to you about somethin’.”

“Confession? The schedules are—”

“No, not—not confession, Father, no.”  

The priest stops stacking his papers. “You’re Jack Murdock,” he says, after a beat. “Your mother’s been telling me about you.”

“I’ll bet she has.” His face is healed up, at least. He doesn’t have another match until October, which’ll put him and Matty on the skint end of broke, but they have enough to get through September. If he’s really careful, and Matty doesn’t break anything important. “Good stories or bad ones?”

“Not my place to say,” says the priest.

“Means she told you the bad ones.” Figures. “Seems like it’s her pastime most days.”

“People have their hobbies,” says the priest. “Haven’t seen you at any services.”

“Not much of a church guy anymore.” Too busy, after Maggie had left. And when Matty’d been old enough to start going regularly, well. He’d look at the building and break out in a cold sweat. Even standing in the doorway’s giving him goosebumps. Not fear, not exactly. More like instinctive rejection. Oil and water. “Still believe, though.”

He thinks the priest might lecture, but all he does is go, “Hm.” He’s not all that much older than Jack, not really. There are shadows around his eyes.

“Look.” Jack scuffs a hand through his hair. “I know you—you don’t know me, ‘n you don’t have any reason to give me the time of day, Father, but I was—I was wondering if you’d do me a favor. Or—not even me, not really. Kind of me, but—but not really me.”

The priest shuffles his papers one last time. He looks at Jack, and damn, this priest has the Sees Your Soul stare down perfectly, for someone who’s barely been at the cathedral six weeks. “I don’t know what I can do to help, in particular, but if you need something from the church—”

“Has to be you.” Jack shakes his head. “Not anythin’ illegal, Father. Or—or immoral, either. Just—tryin’ to help a neighbor.”

“I didn’t think it would be either.” He tucks the papers under his arm. “What’s the favor?”

Jack rubs his hands over his face. “Look. My kid’s, ah. He’s kinda imprinted on one of the other kids in our building, little girl, few months older than he is. And, y’know, the—the kindergarten at St. Agnes started last Wednesday, and—”

“—and she wasn’t accepted.”

It sounds so awkward, spoken aloud. “I know her mother’s a wreck,” Jack says, and the priest blinks. “Didn’t get her paperwork in right, didn’t go to any of the meetings. And I know you don’t—really have any, I dunno. You don’t have any control over it, you’re—you’re the priest, you don’t run the school or anythin’ and it’s not like you can order it to change. But can you—” He wants to scuff his shoes over the ground like a high schooler, Christ. “Can you meet her?”

The priest’s eyebrows climb up his head. “The mother?”

“No,” says Jack. “The little girl. Would you talk to her? Just—just for a minute. Girl like that, she—she needs to be in school. If she’s stuck alone all day, she’ll, uh. Probably blow up a building. Or somethin’, I don’t know. Scratch her own eyes out.”

Another long, slow blink. “I don’t understand, is she—difficult?”

 _Only if you treat her wrong._ Christ, he hopes she won’t freeze up. Darcy freezes up with new adults. Especially with men she doesn’t know. He’s pretty sure it comes from Lorna, and Lorna’s taste in men, but he can’t be sure, really. “No, she’s just, ah—it’d be easier if you talked to her. Even if it’s only for a minute or two.”

Forget the Sees Your Soul look; this is a I Know Your Game look. “I’m assuming she’s here somewhere.”

“Park,” Jack says, and bites his tongue to keep the relief from showing on his face. “Across the street. My neighbor’s watchin’ ‘em.”

“Them?”

“Matty’s imprinted. Hard to find one without the other lately.” He tips his head. “This way.”

Mrs. Gonzalez is a doughy Puerto Rican woman with a heavy accent and a smile like a soufflé; it only shows up properly when you quit checking to see if it’s there. She’s knitting, something for one of her grandkids, Jack’s pretty sure. Some kind of crocheted toy. “Hello,” she says, all warm accents. “ _Buenos dias_ , Father.”

“ _Buenos dias,_ ” says the priest, and keeps going. Jack doesn’t know any Spanish, at all; all the words flow into each other like music. He quits paying attention, starts looking for the kids. They’d been on the jungle gym when he’d wandered over to the church, but now—and it takes him a second, because they’re in the shadows—they’ve settled beneath the thing, both of them peering at the same book. _The Hobbit_ again, maybe. Or _The Fellowship of the Ring,_ which would explain why they’ve been coming to him with word questions lately. Panic flares bright in his head— _wait, shit, that’s probably too dark for them, should I take it away, what if_ —but then the Spanish dies, and the priest says, “Is that them? Under the jungle gym.”

“That would be them,” Jack says, his heart oddly fast. “Yes. Darcy! C’mere for a sec.”

Of course Matty comes. He should have expected Matty tagging along. Darcy’s the one holding the book, but Matt trots along behind her, wood shavings in his shirt. Darcy’s somehow managed to get them in her hair. She slows, just a bit, when she sees the priest, drops back to let Matt lead. He can’t hear whatever she says to him, when she pulls on Matt’s sleeve and whispers something, but Matty comes through clear as day. “That’s the Father, he’s okay.”

“Oh,” Darcy says, and wrinkles her nose. “Whose father is he?”

“I dunno. No one’s, I guess. He just talks about God a lot and tells us things.”

Jack thinks the priest might be trying hard not to laugh. “Something along those lines,” he says, gravely, and the pair of them—for the first time, he can see why Mrs. Gonzalez occasionally calls them the _Terror Twins_ , because they have exactly the same look on their faces right now, all dark hair and suspicion and insularity—swivel around to stare.

“Oh,” Darcy says again. She’s still kind of curling up behind Matty a little bit, her fingers caught in his sleeve. “Gran says they’re called rabbis.”

…that’s new. _Since when is Lorna Jewish?_ He’s pretty sure Lewis isn’t a Jewish name, and he hadn’t seen anything in their apartment to say _we are Jewish,_ either, but—huh. That might actually explain why she’d been so odd about the fact that St. Agnes was a Catholic-run school.

“Rabbis are similar,” says the priest, and crouches a little. He’s still in his robes, which means the black cloth puddles up against the sidewalk like crow feathers. “What are you reading?”

“ _The Fellowship of the Ring,_ ” says Matty. He steals a look at Jack. “Where they’re running from the Nazguls.”

The priest, thank God, does not flinch at this. “Who picked it out?”

“Darcy,” says Matty. Darcy’s still staring at the priest, her eyes narrowed. “We read _The Hobbit_ and this is the next one, so.”

“It’s logical,” agrees the priest. “I think this one is my favorite, actually, out of the whole of the Ring Cycle.”

Matty inflates a little. “ _The Hobbit_ has dragons.”

“That it does.” The priest muses for a second. “What else have you read?”

Darcy and Matty look at each other. “Both of us?” Darcy asks, a little leery. The priest shrugs.

“Either of you.”

“ _Matilda,_ ” Darcy says, and Matty smiles for some reason. “ _The Borrowers._ ”

“ _Where the Sidewalk Ends._ ”

“ _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,_ ” Darcy adds, and Matty nods.

“ _Bridge to Terabithia_.”

“ _The Rats of N.I.M.H._ ”

Matty blinks at her. “ _The Rats of N.I.M.H._?”

“I brought it with me,” Darcy says. “ _Ramona Quimby_. _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe._ ”

“ _Maniac Magee,_ ” says Matt. “ _A Wrinkle In Time._ ”

“The dictionary,” Darcy says, and they start giggling like idiots. The priest— _fuck, what the hell is his name_ —is doing a very good job at keeping a straight face, though Jack’s fairly sure he’s biting his tongue to keep from making any surprised noises.

“How old are you?”

“Five,” Darcy says. “He’s four, I’m five.”

Matty mutters something that sounds like _only two months_ and then shuts up again.

“And you read them by yourself?”

“I borrow them,” Darcy says. “From my gran before, and Mrs. Gonzalez now. Yeah?”

“Correct,” says Mrs. Gonzalez.

“If you had to pick a favorite one,” says the priest, not to both of them, but just to Darcy, “which one would it be?”

They look at each other. Darcy chews long and hard on her thumbnail, and Jack makes a mental note to check whether or not she’s made it bleed. Finally, she says, “ _Matilda_. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

She shakes her head, and that’s that. Darcy’s done. She wraps both her arms tight around _The Fellowship of the Ring_ , and clams up. The priest watches them both. “I’m Father Lantom,” he says. “By the way.”

“Darcy,” says Darcy solemnly. “He’s Matty.”

Matty steals another look at Jack, and scuffs his foot over the ground.

“I won’t interrupt your reading any longer,” says Father Lantom, and gets to his feet. “It was very nice to meet the pair of you.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Matty, in the dutiful _I don’t care but I have to_ way, and then they’ve darted off. Lantom stands there, watching them, for a full minute before he turns back to Jack and to Mrs. Gonzalez.

“Who taught them to read?”

“I taught Matty,” Jack says. “Well, partly. He taught himself half of it when I wasn’t looking and now I’m tryin’ to keep track. Dunno about her. Her mom, maybe.”

“Her grandmother,” says Mrs. Gonzalez, and starts another row on her knitted doll. “That’s what she told me, anyway. Her mother told her some things, but she mostly learned from her grandmother.”

“Hm,” says Lantom, and folds himself into thought. Jack keeps his mouth shut. Better, he thinks, then openly begging. _This girl’s the only friend my kid’s ever had and she’s whip-smart and talented and if you stick the pair of them together they’re miles smarter than me already, they need this, please, please, please_ —

“The paperwork was all submitted?” Lantom says.

“So far as I know.”

“I can’t promise anything.”

 _Thank fucking Christ._ “I don’t—I wasn’t askin’ for a promise, Father, just that, y’know. You’d try if you could.”

Lantom looks the way Jack felt the first time he’d been confronted with the pair of them: highly concussed. “It might take me a little time.”

“’sokay. We can manage.”

“What does her mother do?”

Mrs. Gonzalez makes a noise like a steaming kettle, and misses a stitch.

“She works for a phone sex company,” Jack says. “It’s a job, like any other. Not a bad one. Problems aren’t coming from the job.”

“I see.” Combine _concussion_ with _unexpected gut punch_ and that’s about how Lantom looks right now. “I may need to alter that slightly for the admissions office. A few of the sisters are touchy about sex work.”

Figures they would be. “Of course, Father.”

“Why are you the one coming to me with this?” Lantom peeks out of the corner of his vision, watching Matty and Darcy clamber up into the top of the slide. “I know you said her mother’s—complicated. But you could have left it until next year.”

Jack opens his mouth, shuts it again. He rubs at the back of his neck. “She’s a good kid. And, y’know. Loads of people would’ve done it.”

“Not loads,” says Lantom, in an odd voice. He draws himself up. “I’ll have something for you in a week, if I can manage to get in touch with the sisters quickly. Like I said, there are no guarantees.”

“Just want a chance,” Jack says. “That’s all. I owe you.”

“No,” says Lantom. “Not for this, you don’t.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Work was a nightmare and I had a phenomenally bad week. Like, to the point that I thought a meteor would come and put me out of my misery bad. No bueno, y'all. 
> 
> Some content warnings for bullying, both child-to-child and adult-to-child (though the latter is only implied). Darcy's a possessive kitty-cat and so there's biting and basically a schoolyard scuffle. 
> 
> These two are quite literally the Terror Twins, I swear to god.

St. Agnes only has a few nuns working in the associated Catholic schools, in spite of everyone whispering about how the nuns seem to rule Hell’s Kitchen. There’s Sister Eugenie, who works the front desk for the middle and high school; Sister Katherine, who’s the vice principal of the elementary school; and Sister Miyuki, who’s one of the teachers at the preschool and kindergarten, and generally watches over the kids after the school day ends to make sure all the little brats get off with their requisite parents and guardians and siblings, et cetera. It’s Sister Miyuki, tiny, with crow’s-feet wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, that comes to meet him at the door two weeks in and says, “Matthew didn’t have a particularly good day, today.”

Like that’s not shit terrifying. “Somethin’ happen?”

“There was—” She gropes for words. “He wouldn’t tell me himself. I think some of the other children were teasing, and he lost his temper.”

Which is terror in a completely different slant, because _please, God, don’t let him be too much like me._ “Do you know what it was about?”

“Like I said, he didn’t—tell me much. But I have a theory.” She touches a thumb to her lip. “Another student came to class about a week ago, and Matthew’s very fond of her—”

“Darcy,” Jack says. “I know.” _Believe me._

“Darcy,” says Sister Miyuki, relaxing a little. “Yes. But it’s—difficult. A lot of the other students are being a bit—rough. Not physically, but, y’know—”

“Teasing.”

“After a fashion. There’s a lot of—” she hesitates. “Singing.”

“Singing about what?”

She opens her mouth, shuts it again. “Sitting,” she says. “In trees.”

 _Ah, Christ._ “What happened?”

“Only a little scrap, I think. A few children were involved, including Matthew and Darcy. There may have to be a meeting, I don’t know.”

“Can I take him home?”

“For today. It’s only the first time, so I’m fairly sure we’ll be able to smooth it over without much trouble. You quite probably won’t have to come in at all. After all, they’re so young, they haven’t learned how to not use their fists to settle a spat.”

“He knows better,” Jack says, because Christ, hasn’t he told Matt a million times by now, _you don’t need to hit people to make them understand_? How many times has he said that? _Fucking hell._ “He apologize to them yet, or—”

“I figured keeping them apart until tomorrow would be the best course of action,” says Sister Miyuki dryly. “The other boys aren’t in the mood.”

“Mostly boys?”

“Except for Darcy.” She stops again. “I think they argued, after.”

“Matty and Darcy?”

“I couldn’t hear any of it, but she stormed off. It took an hour to get her to come out of the cupboard, and Matthew’s…” Sister Miyuki clasps her hands together. “I think the word I want right now is _melancholy_.”

Great. “Where’s Darcy?”

“Her mother took her home,” says Miyuki. “About ten minutes ago.”

Lorna actually showed up? That’s a surprise. “Right,” says Jack. “Right. Where’s he hiding?”

Matty’s managed to wedge himself into a corner. He’s picking up weird habits from Darcy, Jack thinks. He’s started finding places to hide and sulk, instead of just settling in the middle of the room and making it clear that _I don’t want to talk to anyone, go away_. Jack peels him out of the preschool (Matty says nothing), thanks Sister Miyuki (Matty says nothing), and walks them home in silence.

It’s only once they make it back into the apartment, and Jack’s locked the door behind them, that he says, very careful to keep the anger out of his voice, “You wanna tell me what happened at school today?”

“No,” says Matty, and stalks off into the living room. He’s stowed himself behind the couch by the time Jack manages to get his shit together and follow, very studiously not looking at him. Jack drops down onto the sofa.

“Heard some kids were being shitty.”

“They wouldn’t shut up,” Matty says. “We asked and asked and they wouldn’t stop or go away.”

“Shut up about what?”

Matty scuffs his feet over the carpet, and looks at the pattern he’s left behind.

“How many times have I said to you that no matter what people say you can’t hit ‘em to make ‘em listen?” _Christ, kid._ “You know that, Matty.”

“They wouldn’t leave us alone!”

“So that means you start a fight?”

“I didn’t start it, Darcy did!”

That’s a little bit of a relief, but not much. “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure her mom’s gonna have a talk with her about that—” or he hopes she will, but knowing Lorna, it’s questionable “—but that doesn’t mean you didn’t haul ass in there after her, does it?”

Matty glares at him through his hair. “They wouldn’t leave us _alone_.”

“Who’s they, Matty?”

He goes silent.

“Jesus Christ, kid, I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

More silence.

“Sister Miyuki said somethin’ about them singin’ at you, is that what this is about?”

“They said we’re weird.” Matty says it to the carpet, and not to Jack, but at least he’s talking. “We’re not supposed to be friends.”

“You and Darcy?”

“They keep singing stupid songs—” he unfolds, just a little, from his ball “—and—doing stupid things, saying _idiotic_ things—”

“Watch your fifty cent words there, kid.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Matty bursts out, and yup, there it is, there’s the issue right there, because Matt looks like he’s about to scream with frustration, and _Jesus, sometimes little kids can be shits._ “She’s _not_ , that’s _stupid_ —”

“You mind comin’ out of there so I can talk to you without twistin’ my neck?”

Matty’s ribs heave. It takes a little bit, an agonizing few seconds, before finally he nods. When he lifts his arms (which he hasn’t done in a while, come to think of it, _growing up too fast, pipsqueak_ ) Jack torques himself around and heaves his ridiculous, brilliant kid out from behind the couch. There are little marks on his hands ( _and you caught tooth with one of those smacks, didn’t you, kid_ ), his nose and eyes are crimson, and his mouth is all twisted up with frustration, like he’s being force-fed lemon rind. Matt scoots away from him, but not too far, mostly just to get his own space, Jack thinks. He covers his hands up with the hem of his shirt when he sees Jack looking.

“Sister Miyuki take a look at those?”

“Mm.” He doesn’t pull his hands free, though. “Are we not supposed to be friends?”

“You and Sister Miyuki?”

“Darcy,” Matty says. “And me.”

Christ. “Some people think—hold on.” Jack rubs his hands over his face. “Hard for some people to see, y’know. Girls and boys being friends without…stuff. Prob’ly, y’know, the other kids at school, they’ve heard their parents talking about how girls and boys and men and women can’t just be friends, and they’re singin’ at you because they think that’s the only way things have to be.”

“Why do people think that’s the only way?”

“I have no idea, kid,” Jack says, and Matty curls up next to him and stares pensively at the wall. “Never had any idea. Doesn’t make sense to me.”

Thoughtful quiet again for a minute. 

“You mad at Darcy?”

He shakes his head, wordlessly, and wraps himself up into a ball. They keep picking up this shit from each other, and it’s heartbreaking and kind of amazing all at once. “No.”

“Sister Miyuki says you two argued.”

“No,” Matty says. Then: “She said—”

Silence.

“What, kid?”

Matty mumbles something so low that Jack can’t make it out.

“Can’t hear you.”

“She hates me now,” Matty says, and that, at least, is something he can deal with. Jack shakes his head.

“Darcy doesn’t hate you.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re friends and you had a fight. Doesn’t mean she’s gonna hate you.”

“She told me to leave her alone.”

Great. “She say anything else?”

Matt’s eyes are overbright, but he’s trying really, really damn hard not to cry, so Jack doesn’t mention it. “That we didn’t have to be friends anymore if I didn’t want to be.”

 _Darcy Lewis, you little martyr._ “You think she might have been trying to keep people from teasing the pair of you?”

“I don’t know, she wouldn’t say anything else.”

“What’d you say?”

“I didn’t—” He sniffs. “She ran away.”

 _Both of you, Jesus Christ._ “Think about it this way,” Jack says. “You wanna stop being friends with Darcy ‘cause of this?”

Matty whips his head around, sheet white. “No!”

“You think she wants to stop being friends with you ‘cause of this?”

Matty props his chin up on his kneecaps. “She said—she said she didn’t care what they said.”

“Darcy ever lie to you about anything?”

“No,” he says, firm. “Never.”

“Then what do you have to worry about, kid? What does it matter what the other kids in your class think? If you two wanna stay friends, then you stay friends, that’s not a bad thing. Or an impossible thing. Me and Mrs. Gonzalez are friends, you see us kissing in a tree?”

He kind of wishes he had a camera, because the expression on Matty’s face is the very definition of _revolted._ “Ew.”

“Or me ‘n Christina from Fogwell’s?”

“ _Ew_ , Dad.”

“There you go,” says Jack. “You be friends with who you wanna be friends with, kid. They have a problem, then screw ‘em. Doesn’t matter what other people think.” Which he’ll be sure to mention to Darcy, next time he sees her. “All right?”

Matty absorbs that, for a little bit. He tucks his nose between his knobbly knees. “You mad at me?”

“No,” says Jack. “Not mad. Little disappointed that you wanted to hit people instead of asking for help, but I’m not mad.”

Silence again.

“Fighting, y’know.” Jack sighs. “With friends, anyway. Sometimes fights happen. If—if you fight, or if you disagree about somethin’, or if somethin’ happens and you can’t forgive each other, that’s one reason to stop bein’ friends with someone. But to give up just ‘cause of what other people think—‘s a shameful thing to do. That’s what’d really disappoint me, kid. If you give up your best friend because of what the other kids in school say.”

He stares at the carpet for a bit. Jack rubs a hand over his shoulders, absently. Matty’s not crying, he thinks. Just thinking.

“Think you should go say sorry,” he says. “To Darcy. And to the other kids at school, tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

“Want me to come?”

“No,” says Matty, and slips off the couch. “I can.”

“All right.” Jack catches him by the back of the shirt, and hauls him back to press his mouth to Matt’s hair. “You know where she is?”

“Of course,” says Matty, and wrinkles his nose. “I know her hiding places.”

“You need me to open up the roof?”

He shakes his head.

“You wanna tell me where you’re endin’ up just in case something happens?”

“If I told you where she’s hiding,” says Matty, rolling his eyes, “it’s not a hiding place anymore.”

“Smartass,” says Jack, and pushes. “Go.”

Matty goes. Jack waits until he’s shut the door behind him (probably heading to the bike racks, he thinks, or to the nook in the basement that they both think he doesn’t know about, or half a dozen other places he can name off the top of his head) before he puts his head in his hands and sighs. There’s not really anything else he can do, at the moment.

.

.

.

He’s pretty sure that the other kids in school are scared of him and Darcy now, and Matt doesn’t really have a problem with it.

It’s not like anybody says anything. Still, other kids won’t go near them if they’re sitting together. Darcy still has a split lip from where Nathan kicked her in the face, and she keeps glaring at people when they go by, like she’s daring them to fight. Sister Miyuki had pulled him aside that first day to ask if everything was all right, and Matt had nodded and run away as fast as he could, because it’s—not really okay, not exactly, but _they’re_ okay now, which is what matters.

“You’re weird,” Darcy had said, when he’d gone down to the laundry room and found her behind one of the dryers and said, very quickly, _I still want to be friends and the kids at school are stupid and I don’t care what they think but if you don’t want to be that’s okay_. “You’re weird and you’re a moron,” she’d said, but she’d come out from behind the dryer anyway, and hugged him, which is all that really matters. Now whenever people come close she looks like she wants to bite. (Nathan, who still has bite marks on his arm, stays very far away.)

It hadn’t really just been the whole girlfriend and boyfriend thing, which was awful and gross enough on its own. (It’s _Darcy_ , Matt thinks, baffled, why would he want to do anything with _Darcy,_ Darcy’s _Darcy_ , that’s _vile,_ she’s Darcy and that’s so weird that it makes him want to run at the thought.) _You two are_ _freaks_ , Nathan had said, sounding triumphant, the way Matt thinks someone might sound if they finally managed to get a bull’s eye or land a punch right or catch a fish the length of their arm, and Darcy had _flown_ at him. It’d happened so fast that Matt almost hadn’t realized what was happening until it had happened, but Nathan had said _freaks_ and the next instant Darcy had been gone and someone had been yelling and the whole group was falling into it. He’s still in trouble with his dad, but he doesn’t regret getting into the fight too. If she hadn’t, he thinks, he would’ve, in the next second. Next _millisecond._

“Hi.” Darcy flops down onto the carpet next to him, and folds her legs up. “Sister Miyuki says that we have to say sorry today.”

Matt makes a noise in the back of his throat that his dad calls _grumpy tomcat_ , and turns the page of the dictionary he’d found behind the teacher’s desk. It’s not as big as the one he has at home, but there are different words in here, so it works okay. “It was their fault.”

“Yeah,” says Darcy, “but I bit him.”

“They called us freaks.”

“And they’re stupid.” She knocks him in the ankle with her bare foot. Sister Miyuki gets exasperated when Darcy hides her shoes places and says she lost them, but it’s not like they go outside barefoot, so Matt doesn’t think it matters. “Not the way you’re stupid.”

“Stupid means the same thing either way.”

“No, because they’re stupid mean.” She knocks him in the ankle again. “You’re just a moron. You’re smart but you’re a moron.”

“Thanks,” says Matt, wrinkling his nose, and Darcy has one of her loopy fits, the weird giggling that always kind of circles around and bubbles more than anything else. She doesn’t do it very often, at the apartment, but here it happens more.

“You _are_ a moron.” She kicks him again, which, from Darcy, is as good as a hug, and then says, “I think Nathan’s gonna go first though. And the others. Since they started it.”

“Mm.” He turns another page without looking at it. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Kristopher—with a K, not a C, since there are two Christophers and people have to say it aloud to make sure you know the difference—watching them. Kristopher had been one of the people to be on Nathan’s side. “Don’t want to.”

“Nah,” says Darcy. She settles on her stomach next to him to peer at the page. “They don’t get to call you names.”

“They were calling both of us names.”

“Yeah, but people always call me names. I don’t care if they call me names, I care if they call you names.”

Something in him goes cold and sickly when she says that, like he’s been dropped into the deep end of a moldy pool. _But nobody should call you names,_ he wants to say, _that’s not fair, I don’t want people to call you names,_ or for her to look like that, her split lip and her bruised chin all mixing up with whatever it is on her face that makes her look so sad. She doesn’t look up from the page, or seem to notice how bad that is, really, that people call her things and she doesn’t care anymore. When Matt steals a look at her, she’s just watching the definition for _defenestration_ like it’s going to change if she blinks.

“People shouldn’t,” he says. “That’s not fair.”

“Life’s not fair,” says Darcy, not in her regular voice but in her Lorna voice. “I don’t care anymore.”

“You’re not a freak.”

Darcy rocks sideways and tips into his shoulder for a second before swaying away. “You’re not a freak either.” She peeks again. “You’re my best friend.”

Matt doesn’t know what to say. He can’t say anything, not really. Darcy tips into his shoulder and sticks there, this time, still looking at the page.  

“You’re mine,” he says, after a little bit, maybe too long, but Darcy beams at him for it, and maybe taking time to get his courage up is okay, really. She knocks her head to his shoulder this time, and then rolls onto her back, her hair tangling over the page of the dictionary.

“I don’t want to say sorry to them.”

“No.”

“We kind of have to, though, don’t we?”

“Probably,” Matt says, and thinks, _Nobody gets to call you names anymore._ “Dad said to tell you that he bought apples and things today.”

She has another loopy giggle-fit. “Cool.”

“Darcy.” It’s Sister Miyuki. She’s probably the nicest out of everyone who works here, Matt thinks, out of all the teachers. He’s also pretty sure she’s on their side, even though she’s a teacher and can’t say that. “Matt, can you come with me for a second? I think there’s something you ought to say to Nathan and the others.”

“Do we have to?” Darcy says, but gets to her feet, pulling Matt with her. She doesn’t let go of his hand after, which is new. She doesn’t ever do this at school, not really. Except now she does, because she’s doing it. “They started it.”

“It doesn’t matter who started it, it matters that you hit them, and that wasn’t kind.” She doesn’t say a word about how Darcy hasn’t let go, and Matt takes advantage. He squeezes her fingers hard enough that his own ache. “And you know you’re not supposed to bite.”

Darcy shrugs, and doesn’t respond. Matt doesn’t react at all.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with the pair of you,” says Sister Miyuki, but it’s fond. “They’re waiting near the bookshelves, come on.”

Nathan doesn’t sound very sorry, but neither do they. And if the other kids start singing a few weeks later, then one or the other bares their teeth and says “I’ll _bite_ you,” and it works. For a little while, at least.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SEVERE CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER. Part of why it took so long for me to write was that I did NOT want to write about this shit, but I had to, so. 
> 
> CW for: child abuse (physical and emotional), violence, blood. JACK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CHILD ABUSE, before people freak out. 
> 
> Usually there's a Darcy or a Matt POV after Jack, but I didn't have the stomach for it. It'll probably be referenced in next chapter, but I feel like this stands on its own.

It’s a week after Matty turns five (and he’s gleeful about it, Matty, not just because it means he gets cake but because it means when people ask how old he is he now no longer has to say _only two months_ , and for some dumbass reason it’s adorable) when it happens.

They’ve been arguing more, lately. Lorna and Nick. He can never really hear what they’re saying, not through the floor, but more and more often Darcy creeps in through the door with no warning, and more and more often there’s cursing downstairs, screaming and on one highly unpleasant night the crash of a phone through the window. Jack’s an idiot for not expecting it sooner. Then again, he’s always kind of been an idiot. It’s just this time it has consequences.

It’s been getting cooler, now that it’s crossing from September into October. (Matty’s birthday is soon, he thinks. He needs to keep track of the dates.) Cooler weather means longer sleeves for the brats, though Darcy seems to be sticking to T-shirts out of necessity. Until she turns up in her first long-sleeved thing, Jack’s not even sure she has any. It explains why she’s been so cuddly with Matty, if she’s cold. (Another mental note: if he can find a spare coat, he can loan it to her and then forget to take it back. That’s not a gift if he forgot.)

It really gives him no excuses, though, because it’s only after the bruise has gone a little greenish around the rim that he even realizes it’s there. It’s half hidden under the sleeve of her T-shirt, and the only reason he sees it is because she’s scratching at a scab on her elbow and the cloth’s ridden up just enough to show off the edges.

“What happened to your arm, sparky?”

Darcy goes dead silent, looks at him with big eyes, and Jack’s stomach falls right through the floor. She kind of hunches back into her shoulders. “Nothing.”

“Darcy,” Jack says, and next to her on the floor, Matty gets all stiff and unhappy-looking around the mouth. “Sweetheart, what happened to your arm?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” says Darcy again. “Nothing happened.”

Matty’s lips part, like he’s about to speak. He shuts up, though, when Jack slides off the couch, settles on the floor with them. “C’mere,” says Jack, and Darcy flicks terrified glances between him and Matty and back before creeping forward, sideways like a crab. She has one hand curled tight over the mark on her arm, like that’s going to convince him it no longer exists. Jack stays slow and quiet, the way he’d had to way back at the beginning, as skittish, shy little cat Darcy settles on the carpet right next to him, and looks at him through glasses slipping down her nose.

“You fall?” he says, and touches her wrist with two fingers. She flinches.

“No,” she says, barely speaking, and when he touches her arm again, she pulls it away. “It’s nothing.”

“Lemme see it, sparkler,” says Jack. “I just wanna make sure you don’t have to go to the doctor.”

“I don’t.”

“Please?”

Darcy wavers, ferociously. Then she sticks out her arm, awkward and sideways, like she can’t stand it attached to her body any longer. Jack picks at the end of her sleeve, rolls it up, and then— _Christ._ Her arm is tiny, a five-year-old’s arm, and almost too small to show the full imprint, but there are four dark marks on the underside, the green of the palmprint, and _Jesus, someone squeezed her arm so hard it bruised._ Too small to be Lorna’s hand. The world whites out. There’s just a thrumming of _something_ in his head, pounding, again and again and again. Heartbeat. Rage. _No._

“Jack,” says Darcy, and her eyes are big, full of tears. Matty’s standing next to them both, picking at Jack’s sleeve. “Jack, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

“ _Don’t apologize_ ,” Jack says, and it’s a snarl. Darcy flinches, and her face screws up. She wrenches her arm, trying to get him to let go, and his lips are numb when he does, like she’s made of fire. His hands are trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and Matty’s on his feet, looking close to tears. “Jack, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

 _Fuck._ The last thing Darcy needs is his temper. Jack tries to put his face back together, takes a breath, rubs at his eyes. “Darcy,” he says. She scuttles back, just a bit. “Darce, I’m not mad, honey. Not at you. Okay? It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Darcy looks at him, and tears streak down her face.

“I’m not mad,” he says, and slowly—she’s the bravest little bit of a thing he’s ever seen, to do this when she’s seen him angry—Darcy creeps forward. When he scoops her up, settles her in his lap, she starts hiccupping. “I’m not mad at you, baby girl.”

Her hands tremble as she wraps both arms around his neck. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”  

“What is it?” Matty’s plucking at both of them, warbling and crying. “Dad, what is it?”

“It’s okay,” he says, and scoops Matty into the bundle too, holding on to both of them. Then the kids are both crying, and _fuck me for being such a shit that I made five-year-olds cry_. “It’s okay, kids. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m not mad. It’s okay. You’re both gonna be okay.”

It takes a while before they both cry themselves out.  

Jack doesn’t do anything for three days. He can’t do anything, not really. If he confronts Lorna, she’ll deny it. _The woman’s an idiot if she thinks her shit boyfriend is worth keeping around after he hurts her kid_ , and he smashes a mug in the sink to get his temper out when the kids are off at school one day, snarls and smashes the mug and storms off to Fogwell’s to beat the shit out of a bag. Nick’s stayed away from the building before, after bad fights, and it’s not as though Jack knows how to track the bastard down. Not alone.

“You okay?” Bernie asks one day, when Jack unwraps his hands and realizes he’s split his knuckles. There’s blood on the inside of the wraps. “You haven’t been this mad since you lost that first fight.”

“Don’t ask,” Jack says, and throws everything into his gym bag. “Don’t fucking ask.”

Bernie raises both hands, and ducks out of the locker room.

It’s three whole days, seventy-two whole hours, until he hears Nick’s voice downstairs again. The kids are asleep on the couch bed, cuddled together like puppies, and the TV blaring almost cuts through the sound of the argument downstairs. Jack turns down the volume just a little, just enough. His hands are cold again. His mind is cold.

“ _—fuck are you doing back here_ —”

“— _not going anywhere, you fucking bitch_ —”

There’s a crash downstairs, and then the sound of shattering ceramic. Next to him on the bed, Darcy whines in her sleep. She reaches out, clutching at Matty’s sleep shirt, at the blankets. Jack touches his hand to her back, leaves it there, and finally she settles, dozing back off, vanishing into dreams.

Jack gets off the couch bed.

He has to wait outside for another hour, standing out of sight of the security cameras, for Nick to come out. He always comes out, with fights like this. He’ll come out, smoke a cigarette, toss some cans around. Come back inside. Start another fight. Always another fight. _Fucking bastard._ He’s operating on autopilot, dizzying in its mechanics. _Fucking bastard. You don’t touch kids. You don’t touch kids._ Jack stands with his back to the brick, and stares up at the dim yellow reflection of the city on the sky. _You’re going to get into so much shit for this, Murdock._

He doesn’t care. When Nick passes the corner of the building, Jack seizes him by the back of his jacket, and flings him into the wall.

Nick’s either drunk, or slower than he looks. He’s scrabbling for the gun in the back of his pants when Jack throws him again, hard into the brick, fisting a hand in the bastard’s collar, ramming him up against the wall, forearm braced to the back of his neck. “Shit,” Nick says, “Jesus fuck,” but Jack gets a hand around the gun before Nick can, throws it away down the alley and leans, breathing hard, right up against Nick’s ear.

“You like hurting kids?” He wants to bare his teeth. “You like hurting little kids, Nick? Like making them cry? That the kind of man you are?”

“What the fucking shit,” Nick says, or starts to say, but Jack slams him back into the wall before he can get it all the way out. He wants to cave the man’s knee, snap a bone. He could. Not that hard to twist something until it breaks. His hands are blocks of ice.

“Listen to me.” There’s a monster coiling in his mouth. “Listen—Nick, listen, listen to me. You take your shit and you get out. You leave that woman alone, you leave her daughter alone, you get the fuck out of this building and away from them and you don’t come back.”

“You have no idea who the fuck you’re dealing with, Murdock—”

He doesn’t think. There’s a bursting against his knuckles, blood and popped cartilage, and then Nick’s bleeding, his nose is broken, he has a hand to his face like a schoolboy who’s been punched for the first time and he’s lunging, trying to fight back, but Nick’s nothing, not compared to the scraps he gets into at Fogwell’s. Another crack, and Nick’s on the ground, and there’s red smeared over the back of his hand.

“I don’t think you heard me,” he says, and God, he’s so, so cold. “You get your shit, and you get out of that apartment. You ever come near either of them ever again, and you’ll get a lot worse than a broken nose.”

“I know who the fuck you are,” Nick says, and his teeth are a horror, all smeared with blood. “You think you’re just going to—”

“You think Finn Brannigan gives a shit about you, Nicky, you’re wrong.” It’s petty, and it’s bad form, and he can’t resist it, kicking Nick hard enough in the ribs to knock the breath out of him. He does it again, and again, and then he staggers back, because he’s breathing too hard, he’s panting, and there’s a wildfire in his head, screaming through the frost. “Get the fuck out of this building, and stay out. You come near either of ‘em, that woman or her daughter, I swear to God I will make your life a living hell.”

Nick rolls onto his back. Air catches and gurgles through his broken nose. “You’re fucking dead, Murdock.”

“Think I can handle your buddies, Nicky, if they all put up a fight like you.”

“Fucking bastard.”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “Worse than you. Don’t push me, Nicky.”

He forces himself away before he can do anything else, before he can give in to anything else. Jack washes the blood off in the kitchen sink, watches it swirl away down the drain, the water running red and then pink and then clear. It’s not quite so easy to knock the devil out of his head, but sticking his head into the living room, watching them sleep for a minute, maybe, for two—it helps.

The bruise is still raw and angry-purple on Darcy’s arm.

 


End file.
